Alumnus Andris Zoltners Endows Professorship at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business

Andris Zoltners, who earned his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University’s Graduate School of Industrial Administration, now the Tepper School of Business, has endowed a professorship at the school to support excellence in teaching and research in the field of operations research.

The Andris A. Zoltners Professorship of Business, made possible by a $2.5 million gift to the Tepper School, will be held by Professor R. Ravi, who is highly respected for his research in optimization problems. Formerly the Carnegie Bosch Professor of Operations Research and Computer Science, Ravi has been a CMU faculty member since 1995.

Zoltners, who received his Ph.D. in operations research in 1973, is founder and co-chairman of ZS Associates, a global sales and marketing consulting firm recognized for its work in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Zoltners also is the Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he’s been a faculty member for more than 30 years. Previously, he served on the business school faculty at the University of Massachusetts. Zoltners is renowned for his expertise in assisting hundreds of companies with their sales force strategy, effectiveness, size, structure, deployment and compensation.

“It is through gifts like this that our school is able to recruit and recognize outstanding faculty and to support their ongoing research,” said Robert M. Dammon, dean of the Tepper School of Business. “We are proud when our alumni go on to become a great success in the global community and we are truly thankful when they give back to the school. Support from individuals like Andris Zoltners helps us retain outstanding faculty who produce impactful research and provide a world-class education to the next generation of business leaders.”

Earlier this year, Zoltners and ZS Associates co-founder, Prabha Sinha, were honored by the Pharmaceutical Management Science Association (PMSA). They were presented with the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award for their pioneering and paradigm-shifting contributions to the management analytics field in the pharma and biotech industry — particularly in data-driven modeling of sales force size and structure. ZS was inducted into the Chicago Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame in 2005.

Zoltners has published more than 40 academic articles, edited two books on Marketing Models, and has co-authored a series of books on sales force management. His books include “Building a Winning Sales Management Team: The Force Behind the Sales Force” (2012); “Building A Winning Sales Force” (2009); “The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation - How to Design and Implement Plans That Work” (2006); “Sales Force Design for Strategic Advantage” (2004); and “The Complete Guide to Accelerating Sales Force Performance” (2001).